Monthly Archives: May 2015

I finally got around the (before) mysteries of wet-on-wet. I struggled for months trying to have a color layered on top of another without having it contaminated, unsuccessfully. Then, I read several topics on WetCanvas stating the real deal for wet on wet (specifically, Bob Ross’ and Bill Alexander’s styles) is paint oiliness.

Right after reading it, I wanted to experiment myself an see if that was the catch…it was! I laid down a few blobs on a paper towel, let them sit for more than one hour, than painted using them.So, if you still can’t get the hang of it yourself, here is how to make oil paint stiffer for wet on wet! Make sure you don’t leave blobs on the towel too long, or you’ll end up with them being unusable. It all comes down to your brand: Winsor & Newton’s WInton paints are claimed to be firmer, and better suited for this technique (I just ordered some tubes, still waiting for them). On the other hand, Talens Rembrandt and Van Gogh seem to be excessively oily (My yellow and red here).

For your interest, starting from the bottom left, I have burnt sienna, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, nickel azo yellow, scarlet lake, mars black, yellow ochre, titanium while.
I wanted to test the new consistency out on a full scale painting, and here is what I came up with!

Yes, there are plenty of mistakes 😀 As always! I first started out with swatches made with the Gamut Masking Method, but ran out of them and made a real mess trying to match the right colors again. Those greens on the trees are outside my gamut! And the trees themselves went a bit over where I wanted, covering an excessive part of the river and side hills… but oh, well! That is it!

I will post and update soon on gamut masking and color mixing!

p.s. I added phthalo blue and lemon yellow to my previous palette, and almost didn’t use mars black and ultramarine for this

I haven’t had much time to come up with something decent, recently, so I thought I could go back to the basics, and do some quick sketches without reference grid. They are more or less 30-40 minutes each, using references found on the invaluable Reference Image Library of WetCanvas